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For immediate release

Public Art Fund presents…

Juan Muñoz
Conversation Piece, 2001

Five graceful bronze figures to be installed in Doris C. Freedman Plaza

On view September 26, 2002 through March 31, 2003

New York, NY - On September 26, 2002, the Public Art Fund will present Conversation Piece, 2001, a group of remarkable bronze figures by Juan Muñoz, the late Spanish sculptor and installation artist whose untimely death stunned the art world last year. Over the past decade, Muñoz gained international recognition for his "conversation pieces," a series of eloquent, haunting sculptural groups depicting interactions between several figures. Muñoz had for many years examined the three-way relationship between architecture, sculpture and the viewer, and with the Conversation Piece series, he brought his examination fully into the figurative realm. Conversation Piece, 2001, will be installed in Doris C. Freedman Plaza at the corner of 60th Street and Fifth Avenue in Central Park.

Conversation Piece, 2001, is a group of five life-size bronze figures, each of which bear the characteristic qualities of Muñoz's figurative works: Round heads, mute faces with similar features, and expressive gestures. With their oversized rounded bases, wrinkled and bulging, the sculptures seem at once limp and unwieldy. The five figures of Conversation Piece variously lean together, whisper, and ignore one other, transforming the plaza into a theatrical space where a mysterious drama plays out. With his series-and with this compelling example in particular- Muñoz added a new twist to the phrase "conversation piece," the term used to describe a genre of 17th- and 18th-century English and Dutch paintings of social gatherings in domestic interiors or garden settings. Here, sited at the busy southeastern corner of Central Park, Munoz's psychologically-charged scene is as complex and ambiguous as its predecessors are intimate and precise.

About the Artist
Juan Muñoz (1953 - 2001) began his career in the mid-1970s, and gained international recognition as an artist, a curator, and a writer of art criticism and prose. Drawing upon a wide range of sources-literature, music, art history, theater and film-Muñoz's work explored the ways in which architecture and sculpture can weave powerful, open-ended narratives that involve the viewer on both a visceral and intellectual level. Throughout his career, Muñoz revisited certain visual themes-a balcony, a streetscape, patterned floors, the ballerina, the dwarf-which link a diverse body of work that includes drawing, sculpture, installation, performance, and sound-based works. He created his first Conversation Piece in late 1990, shortly after he began to incorporate the human figure into his sculptural installations.

Muñoz was born in Madrid, and studied at University of Madrid, Croydon College in London, and the Pratt Graphic Center in New York. In June 2001, Muñoz realized his most ambitious project ever, Double Bind, a site-specific installation for the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern, London. Muñoz's first-ever American career retrospective originated last year at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., and is traveling nationally through March 2003. Muñoz's work has also been presented internationally at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (1994); Dia Center for the Arts, New York (1996); and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (1996).

About Public Art Fund
Public Art Fund is New York's leading organizer of artists' projects, new commissions, installations and exhibitions in public spaces. With 25 years of experience and an international reputation, the Public Art Fund identifies, coordinates and realizes a diversity of major projects by both established and emerging artists in New York City. By bringing artworks outside the traditional context of museums and galleries, the Public Art Fund provides a unique platform for an unparalleled public encounter with the art of our time.

The Public Art Fund is a non-profit arts organization supported by generous contributions from individuals, foundations, and corporations, and with public funds from The New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs.

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